Laundry
by kumulonimbus
Summary: Do you ever think about that night, Jack? Do you even remember it happened? (Mercy76) (One-shot)


**Laundry.**

* * *

"Loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away."

 _―_ _Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being._

* * *

Just a few months after graduation she had found herself considering that the Overwatch Med Bay was, finally, a place she could call her own. Diploma and mortarboard, the souvenirs she had chosen to leave back at her old place.

 _Home_ now seemed to have mutated into the most peculiar, whimsical concept for her…

The brand new doctor had arrived with wide-eyed gazes and a handful of good intentions. She had settled herself in the organization's headquarters with nothing but books, charts and multi-colored graphics of the human anatomy. Reports about her and her performance were hastily stating the obvious: she was a pioneer, she had potential; there was an inherent hunger inside that woman – she had been provided with a true scientist's talisman: a curious mind, the real, ever fueled engine guiding her steps through her every idea and attempt.

Yet the years and the experiences that came with them, combined with every limit situation forcing her to break all rules in order to create new ones, were miles away from all those concepts now dormant and nearly subjugated by practice itself, each definition now resting on the pages of her books and manuals. These new, overlapping layers of brand new knowledge were slowly piling up upon her young shoulders and they would ultimately provide her with such valuable lessons that she understood could not be retrieved from the pages of any printed manuscript.

Every single milestone, transfigured in the celebratory shape of each fascinating breakthrough, each small victory – the combined results of her success were her personal manifest, in a way. Her scientific researches, developments and achievements had helped the group on countless occasions, many times allowing them to survive what could have been a final fate if it wasn't for her and her hungry spirit, always pushing forward, always motivating her tired bones to do a little more.

Genji Shimada was, by far, the living testimony of her capability and her professionalism.

She had been in charge of both his rescue and his recovery; the monumental, almost Herculean task had required her to cheat death in the first place, only to end up nearly reconstructing Genji's whole physical humanity. As she re-attached limb by limb, a quick glace over the shoulder would have sufficed to tell the world that none of the professors that had tried to teach her valuable lessons during her stay in campus would have been able to understand the true meaning behind the word 'miracle'.

Jesse McCree was too, the walking manifest testifying her abilities but in a complete different way: his recovery, after losing his arm, had tested way more than just the doctor's mere knowledge and thirst for experimentation: her humanity had prevailed, solid and irrefutable, while accompanying the patient during his long path of recovery and reassuring the wounded gunslinger that he still was a capable man.

During her first period as an Overwatch agent she had managed to rebuild two essential aspects of mankind: a pulverized body, and a demolished self-esteem. Yet the simplest of problems seemed to be the only ones that truly persisted, the doctor found herself contemplating this very notion time and again. They could disappear from to time to time but only to resurface again, some months later.

Jack's battered back was the best example of that sordid reality.

Even though he would always try to keep a straight face in front of her, the undeniable truth would reveal, time and again, that his back really ached, even to the slightest touch. The doctor's careful digits kept on drawing circles across his battered skin, pressing her fingertips carefully, only producing his uncontainable groans to grow stronger. Not a young man anymore, there was not a single doubt about that – yet it wasn't just about aging, they both knew it for a fact - the job of a dedicated soldier, solidified and intensified within his very muscles, was finally becoming an elegy for all those long-lost years of blond hair, hard work and half-smiles.

Angela patted his shoulder slightly, indicating the man in his fifties that she was already done. Jack Morrison stretched his numb arms and sat back down on the stretcher, the spasms in his back still reverberating through his every vertebra. Of course a nearly broken body was the result of so many years of intense duty – yet the explosion that could have led to his demise had done its part as well, not only wounding tissue but also perpetrating all sorts of damage to his already decaying system.

The man buttoned up his black shirt and joined the doctor now sitting by her desk – he already knew the prescription she was about to hand him, all too familiar by now with the medication she had recommended as an attempt to mitigate the never-ending pain he was constantly in. Still the doctor stood up again and made her way around her desk, she leaned in and removed Morrison's visor – venturing two soft fingers across his jaw the woman examined his face rather cautiously: just like his back and his spine were in desperate need of a proper vacation, his skin was in desperate need of moisture, the wrinkles and scars that had been scattered all over his visage were in perfect concordance with the gruesome scar on his forehead. Angela shook her head pensively although she wasn't exactly surprised to find that the scar had not changed a bit since his last visit. Fingertips traveling the metaphoric meridian represented by that thin red line – she sighed loudly; he still was her worst patient, after all, even after all the years they had been forced to spend apart from each other.

"You haven't been using the unguent I prepared for you, have you?" Dr. Ziegler demanded, her eyes already dismissing the answer he had yet to give.

"It's a cream." He tried to justify himself. "Men don't use creams."

Classic Jack was back, after all. It was enough to make her smile, true, yet the feeling of being taken for granted rushed its way back at her. Classic Jack was back, indeed.

"Times have changed." Was all she could manage to say, disapprovingly, before looking away.

She went back to her chair and grabbed a pen and her prescription pad from her desk – it wouldn't hurt her to write it down for him, just once more, how to complete his night rounds of unguent, oils and pills; ones to help mitigating the pain in his back; the others for his visage to look healthy again. She described the process in her simple calligraphy, taking note of every single detail of the ritual she already knew he would never make. Yet she handed him the paper anyway and he took it, half grins of poorly concealed awkwardness suddenly taking over both of their faces.

"You know I'll throw this away the minute I walk out that door." Morrison said, a fresh, brand new sense of sincerity invading his words.

The doctor stayed quiet, only nodding in silence, as if giving up on him. The soldier nodded as well, a bitter gesture in the shape of an elaborate grimace found its way to his face. He stood up, leaned in to shake Angela's hand and kiss the gentle doctor on the cheek, yet the image resting carelessly on her desk caught his eye once again, just like it did on every weekly appointment. Lost in a sea of papers and manuscripts, the picture of _that_ night could clearly be seen, shining through the paperwork and countless files that Angela kept on her desk. He had seen it before, many times, yet he had never had the courage to ask her about it. It was easier to look away, to pretend it simply wasn't there. Angela would play her part in the weekly charade as well, acting as naturally as possible, understanding that it was probably better for everyone.

Evocative and mesmerizing, that picture had the power to stop time and engage them in a silent awkwardness so raw it would leave them vulnerable and exposed; that very image had the power to erase the words from their minds and mouths, consuming them little by little, and obligating them into forging a tacit pact of silence, one that engulfed their chocked words into a soundlessness so thin it could be easily perceived by their wearisome senses.

A younger, maybe even happier version of Jack Morrison had his left arm around the doctor's waist.

Behind the two of them stood a jovial Reinhardt, a broad smile exhibiting his teeth, his heavy hands resting on their shoulders. A few inches below Jack's navel Torbjörn's eyes appeared in the picture as well, it was obvious that the one who had taken their picture was also trying to mock the Swedish engineer about his short height barely making it into the frame.

That picture had been taken right before the fall of Overwatch – right before his disappearance and right before his almost eternal absence.

Jack walked around the desk, his eyes unable to look away. He held the photo frame and inspected the image for a minute as a new sort of silence began to encompass him. McCree, he remembered suddenly, had been the one behind the camera that night. Jack chuckled, involuntarily, as his eyes met Angela's:

"The dwarf was so upset that night." He recalled, a half-smile curling up his upper lip. "He had just introduced his girlfriend to us, the tall Norwegian brunette, remember? But Jesse kept bugging him, leaving him out of every single picture or barely showing him, like in this one."

"She was a blonde." Angela corrected him.

"No, I'm pretty sure she had dark hair." Jack retorted, putting the picture back in its rightful place. The doctor shook her head, mildly amused yet quite determined, before taunting the soldier:

"She had blond hair, Jack, and she wasn't Norwegian – she was Dutch. Guess your back is not the only thing that's failing you these days, old man."

* * *

They were celebrating Torbjörn that night – his newest design, a portable turret, had saved the day not only facilitating their performances but also protecting them from afar. Exulting and accelerated, the Swedish engineer had become the center of attraction, gathering all sorts of smiles and compliments but also, becoming a magnet for McCree's endless cascade of jokes and chants about his short height.

"The turret's taller than you, Torb! And it's a _portable_ turret – a _mini_ turret!" A jovial and certainly younger cowboy teased him.

A simple, innocent push was immediately followed by another. The concatenation of volatile responses starting a peculiarly small showdown between the cowboy and the Swedish builder. Then pushing came to shoving and even though their childish little war effectively caused some impervious heads to turn to look at the scene, deep down they were all fully familiarized with McCree's and Torbjörn's charade: the younger one would try to make the engineer lose his temper while the latter would always react rather feverishly, effervescence being one of his highest points, providing the show that could never be completed without a shower of insults in his native tongue.

Only that night Torbjörn had a reason to be actually upset – after giving it much thought he had finally found the courage to introduce his girlfriend, the lovely and monumentally beautiful Lotte, to his fellow soldiers. And what night could have been greater than that one, when they all were celebrating _him_ and his work? There was no place for jokes during such a special occasion.

Lotte – tall, blonde and irrevocably Dutch – took two steps backwards for her own safety as she noticed Torbjörn's and McCree's erratic arms trying to hit their respective targets. The only one that didn't move away was the doctor, standing casually with a glass of red wine in her hand, as she delighted her ears with yet another one of Reinhardt's anecdotes about the group.

An elbow traveled the distance and pushed a distracted Angela, her free hand instantly colliding against the nearest wall for support yet the splash of red wine, precise and yet capricious, had already found her.

A Malbec-colored nebula soon took over the white of her sleeveless dress, the stain didn't know much about geometrical patterns yet it didn't seem to care about it in the slightest. The doctor ran to the kitchen and rubbed a wet piece of cloth against the fabric, soon the red turned to a softer shade of pink but instead of going away it grew bigger, reaching different areas of the dress and making it impossible, even for the most trained eye, to distinguish stained from simply wet.

Frustrated, the woman turned over her shoulder to find the engineer standing motionless a few steps behind her. His nose redder than ever, the short man managed to mumble an apology for ruining her dress and possibly her night. The doctor offered him a silent half-smile, a reassuring pat on the shoulder and left the party, slowly making her way to the headquarters' washing place.

She closed the door and took off her dress, placing it on top of one of the washing machines as she stretched out her hands to reach for the detergent.

"You better wash that soon," an unexpected voice surprised the doctor. "Wine stains are usually the worst."

Sitting on a bench and waiting for his clothes the man could have been mistaken by a piece of furniture in the poorly illuminated room. Angela turned over her shoulder rather abruptly; she hadn't expected to see anyone in there, assuming all members were attending Torbjörn's party.

Jack stood up and offered her a light-blue shirt for her to wear while she waited for the machine to finish its washing cycle. Judging by the looks of it, Morrison had spent most of the night alone in the washing place, taking care of his clothes and uniform – she took the shirt and buttoned it up quickly: the garment was still warm though it hadn't been ironed; its length nearly reaching the doctor's knees.

The woman moved closer and sat on the bench next to the soldier. There were three baskets resting on the ground a few inches away from his feet: two of them were full, the unmistakable scent of detergent letting her know that those garments had already spent their time going round in circles and spinning relentlessly inside the machines – the third one was empty, its contents jumping up and down the washer drum as the device reached the peak of the spin-dry cycle: the noises loud and rather virulent were causing both of them to narrow their eyes.

They didn't speak – not only the noises coming from the washer were loud enough to hide their words behind a thick layer of metallic sounds but also it was the first time they had found themselves together alone in a foreign environment that had nothing to do with her office or the battlefield.

Awkwardness enveloped them suddenly, causing the doctor to stand up again and approach the door.

"You don't have to leave; I'm nearly finished here." Jack said, resting his hands on his knees.

Angela tucked her hair behind her ears – she stayed in the room but she looked away, as if ashamed. She had liked him from the start, that much was true. But now, wearing his shirt and sharing a moment with him seemed absolutely out of place, as if fate had played her: not only her night had been ruined but now Jack had seen her in her underwear, he had shown no interest, no emotion, he had simply offered her a shirt with the same indifference as if he had covered a table with a tablecloth. Not that she was looking to catch his attention – yet it felt as if the man was unable to see beyond the doctor, unable to see Angela.

Noticing her expression changing, the soldier asked:

"What happened?"

"Torbjörn and McCree." The woman replied, rolling her eyes.

"Classic Overwatch." He said, a soft chuckle escaping his lips.

She cursed under her breath as she noticed the washer had stopped working rather abruptly. Angela inspected the machine minutely, as if trying to address the problem. Jack stood up and joined her, without even looking at the washer the man's tight fist hit the top of the device twice: the dress suddenly started to move again inside the machine, water filling up the washer drum.

"These old things…" he began, rather self-indulgently, "they don't need detergent, only tough love can make them work."

He smiled at her contagious laugh, standing right beside her. Then his eyes seemed to notice: that one smiling back at him was not the doctor – it was Angela. Just Angela.

At first she didn't notice the subtle feeling of his upper lip brushing slightly against the corner of her mouth – the sensation was all too natural, even if it was unprecedented; even foreign for her. Then distance became a mere mirage in a nonexistent desert, he strangled it in just one movement, the wholeness of his mouth now welcoming her and baptizing her in a brand new sense of hunger. His arms, venturing a territory that by then seemed uncharted no more, encompassed her shoulders delicately, sublimating those wishes that were finally turning into something real.

His kiss and his chivalry, blended together in a peaceful pursuit of the man exceeding the soldier; summoning the woman to overcome the doctor; the primitive, pulsing truth of the ones they truly were.

As the stronghold of his shoulders and forearms grew stronger, allowing her to quietly stay beyond the lines of the Jack she knew, Angela became finally acquainted with the real man underneath the blue uniform – the half smile on his lips, colliding against her own incredulous smile. No longer the soldier and the doctor; only Jack and Angela, this new reality felt like the first dewdrops kissing the green grass in the initial hours of a dawning, cold winter morning – beautiful and nearly mystical, only brief and humid and unique, awaiting for the inevitable frost to come and cover them in the unbreakable cold of everything that's destined to be fleeting.

They broke the kiss and stared into each other's eyes.

There were explosions but not bombs, the receding lights of eyes that knew the moment had already passed. Her fingers clinging to his shirt as if refusing to let go. Yet the red light was on, the beeping noise of the washing machine interrupting a parenthesis in time that had already concluded.

Laundry time was over.

The dream was over.

They had had an idea: they could be someone else. A regular man and a regular woman, eternally away from her admiration and his respect. A simple pair of people who had finally managed to find a way to express what they truly felt for each other. They saw fireworks suddenly turning into flames; the dancing tongues of fire and destruction corrupting their seemingly innocent idea.

But they were who they were; there was no way to bend that concept.

Laundry time was over. The dream was over – the idea had ceased to exist, subjugated by the cruelest of realities: they had indeed liked each other from the very beginning yet admiration and respect were now fully formed ideas, molded and shaped after those abstract sensations they both had managed to nourish as time went by. What could have been love was now stained in the apocryphal fate of comradeship, and there was no washing machine good enough to remove such indelible stain.

They looked at each other with a certain tenderness encysted deep in their warm gazes. What had happened was now part of a past that progress and mundanity would bury, in time, under a thick layer of oblivion and longing – yet there, in the back of their mind, latent and evocative, the memory they had just created would remain alive and raw, awaiting for the right moment to chase after them and hunt them down, like a phantasmagorical specter awaiting in the low hours of the night for them to bare their weaknesses.

Caught up in the moment, Jack and Angela were no more. The soldier and the doctor, now awkwardly clinging to one another, exposing the radiant and suffocating colors of desperation, were the only ones left in that room.

 _The soldier and the doctor._

They had had an idea – but now the idea was gone.

He took a step backwards, placed his clothes on the third basket and left the room in silence – his deadpan expression was enough to make her understand that the moment had passed and that he was probably already regretting what he had done.

Silence then, became a mere mechanism of self-preservation.

* * *

She had pictured herself on more times that she could count, every week during his appointments, his battered back now a mere excuse for them to spend some time alone yet never truly together – a curious eyebrow, suspicious of the thin layer of oblivion covering his every expression, the soundless questions she would never dare to ask.

 _Do you ever think about that night, Jack? Do you even remember it happened?_

Because it did.

It did happen.

Yet the first revelation presented itself clear and evident: if Jack hadn't spent much time at Torbjörn's party that night, how come he was there, in the picture?

The doctor shook her head pensively, as her mind struggled to find a plausible explanation. No, she didn't remember him being there at all, she had no clear memory of Jack being around when Jesse took their picture.

The soldier waved goodbye almost inaudibly, noticing the doctor already gone, visibly trapped inside the thoughts running inside her head. By the time she searched the room with her own eyes he was long gone, his absence more real than hers, the sting of that doubt still playing tricks on her.

She sighed, as she remembered:

 _I'm pretty sure she had dark hair._

"Right. Torbjörn the Casanova." She reflected bitterly, her words a sullen whisper, as the memories began cascading down the screen of her mental cinema – she had mistaken the nights. The night represented by the picture belonged in a completely different memory: the Swedish tiny man had indeed introduced his girlfriend to the group that night, only it hadn't been Lotte – the Dutch blonde was already history by then. The woman they had met that night was named Lene, the doctor remembered, and she was a tall and dark haired Norwegian. Angela laughed to herself, nostalgia getting the best of her: they were celebrating Jack's birthday that night, the last one of his birthdays before the explosion, before his disappearance, before time and oblivion and hopelessness.

She took the picture as she grimaced at the image: that night she had chosen to wear a navy blue lace dress, not the white one that had been previously ruined several months ago, during Torbjörn's party.

Maybe he was right after all; maybe her memory was the only one malfunctioning, only selecting whimsical fragments of their existences and merging them all together as if trying to create a reality that never actually existed.

Only it did.

It existed.

She exhaled loudly as she put the photograph back in its rightful place – still no matter if time had placed an illusionary curtain before their eyes maybe he _did_ remember _that_ night after all; or maybe he didn't. But how could he ever forget about that night? He, the one who had broken the distance separating their bodies, the one with the hungry heart, the one that had been too coward to face her after kissing her for the first and last time. Forgetfulness was a flimsy concept, she pondered as her forearms came to rest on the desk.

Maybe he had not forgotten because time, seen through the kaleidoscope of distance, and its inclemency had taken its toll on him.

Maybe he had chosen to forget, while she had chosen to remember.


End file.
